The Winding Road
by Masked Man 2
Summary: A half-elf and a Dark elf walk into a bar- bloody Hell, no, you think this is some tavern fool's sorry joke? Hark, and I will tell you a tale of the Wild Roads, of Southern seas and battles fierce and unlikely friendship fit for the books of Bardic lore. ...If I had the books, that is. Think I forgot them somewhere along the way. Co-authored by myself and a friend (in boldface).


" **Greetings, friend! I am eager to meet Jago son of Song. Im sure we'll become such a companiable party. Cheers!"**

"Well, I s'pose I kin go wi' tha'; I've no other name by which t' call m'self at the moment. Well met on th' road, fair Nicholyte! Cheers t' ye, lad."

 **Nic's brows draw together, it seems in curiousity. "Indeed met but I will not claim well till I know you better." He eyes the bard with a look half amused as he mildly scoffed at the term 'lad'. "And you mistaken my fey ancestry for youth."**

"If I mistake, I mean ye no offense." Both hands drifted lithely up, a gesture both placating and indolent all at once. " _Sir_ Fey. Daresay I know a 'int o' summat 'bout the fey." The bard's hands moved downward again, long fingers plucking absently at the air before him as though they played upon an invisible harp. "Or pr'aps no'. One never really knows wha' one knows, now, does 'e? Th' wisdom comes an' goes like a leaf in a river. Maybe ye dreamed i'. Maybe i's real. No way t' tell, 'ey?" And he fixed the dark elf with an appraising stare, a manic gleam lighting up pale eyes of indifferent gray. "Daresay ye know summat 'bout that, same's I know 'bout your fey. 'M I righ'?"

 **Nic's eyes, manner and words are even more cautious than the last. His pale eyes flitting from the bard's lips and his words to the fancing of his hands; wary of any spells weaving between those nimble fingers.**

 **"If you know anything of Fey creatures, I cannot help doubt if what you insinuate is that of common knowledge or if you rather speak of a knowing deeper, the more mysterious. Either way I believe it is irrelevant to my own blood for no mortal alive has yet pierced the Underdark."**

 **Nicholyte's pale eyes darken in a way of reluctant acknowledgement to his Drowan heritage. His eyes now search the bard for any familiarity, as if perhaps he had seen or met him before in his travels.**

Jago met the earnest, probing gaze of Nicholyte with a sort of feckless ease that, over the years, he had come to master. Far better (and more fun, besides) to discomfit a conversational partner into curiosity than to give away too much too soon. He was an entertainer by trade- a deceiver by nature, a charmer by necessity- but he had come to learn when those skills would be appreciated and when it was better to keep them, and myriad other bits of information with them, shored away from common sight. The pale-haired, pale-eyed fellow with whom he now kept company was one of the Dark ones: the beastly Drow, who hated his race with all the cold grace and biting contempt so characteristic of their cave-born kind. He knew. Something in the elven blood gifted him by the mother who died too soon to give him the gift of her voice sang out at him, crying _keep back, keep back, by Taliesin's beard, keep back._

But. No need for the fellow to know. He looked as human as any ordinary mortal man roaming the open road. Dark stubble shadowing his chin and jaw, dark rings shadowing elf-pale eyes. Thick brown hair curling over cloaked shoulders, matted and tangled with twigs and a braid or two of bone. Long, pointed ears hidden beneath the hair and a battered red cap. Skin that was once pale and smooth as Nicholyte's roughened and darkened by wind and weather. Spells and songs, the magic of the ancients ever coursing fever-hot through his veins, clamped behind thin lips. No need at all for the fellow to know, no way for him to tell. 'Twas to his liking, that. 'Twas for the best.

"'Irrelevant,' y'say," he replied, voice light and airy, not a hint of menace or fear behind the words, for what had he to fear? Nothing, yet. Make the pup question, but nothing yet, so long as he _said nothing_. "Irrelevant t'you, who've come up from yer own dark land, 's tha' righ'? Your common knowledge's different from wot's up 'ere, Fey or no'. Always mystery in wot's foreign. You know wot y'know, I know wor I've learned, some other bloke knows nothin' at all an' learns even less. 'S relative, no' irrelevant.

"As fer the Underdark," he continued, clapping the elf once upon the shoulder before beginning to stride along the dirt road once more, restless hands digging for his flute in the deep pockets of his dusty coat, "as fer tha', well." Well, indeed. No good way to say 'it's not nearly so difficult to pierce as you would think.' Though perhaps that was just him speaking. From experience...and stories, of course; there were always stories. But mostly experience. Mind you, it wasn't an experience he'd care to repeat- not more than twice, anyhow. But. It wasn't nearly so difficult to pierce as one would think.

"Th' dead sing a song or two, if the mood teks ' a tale, maybe." That much, at least, was true. "But I'm sure they can' speak of i' quite so well 's one who's been down there 'imself." Finally, his fingers alighted on the flute, and he raised it to his lips and blew a gentle tune. Calming. Encouraging. "Wot say you, Sir Fey? Care t' tell your story? One lonely traveller t' another, words passin' by like th' magic in th' wind. Or should I say th' _faerzress_?"

 **"Faerzress..?" This Drow is taken aback, so long has it been since he has heard of anything from home; and then this-somthing sacred- he heard himself whispering this name of power moreso to himself rather then addressing what this stranger had uttered. The Drow prince pale eyes bore into the departing back of this strange traveler. His pupils dialate; alight with a wild bolt of.. fear? He discards the word in favor of chilling caution. His firm booted feet keep him still, tense, ready. That this strange traveler seemed at a glance and grasp an uninvited taste of his darkened soul. Words teasing him as a fortune teller might. And with an ease that was both magnetic and to almost tempting, as it was dangerous. Unsurety danced across his dark heart. As if his kind even possess such a thing. He lifts his voice carefully.**

 **"I find it worrisome how you come by such knowledge, stranger. Tis dangerous to speak of to those one does not know well."**

 **His blood warms with the beat of his pulse.**

 **"Tell me how you come to know of such things. The dead you speak of as well; is it that you hold counsel with them?" His voice soft with a carven edge, catching in the gentle breeze that stirs his silver hair upon his scale clad shoulders.**

 _Idiot. Idiot, idiot, idiot_. Bloody _sodding_ fool, him, didn't he know better than to go about dropping the magics so recklessly?! Words had power, _names_ had power- what, by th' rood, had possessed him, what? There was no glamor about the Drow that he could sense- no spell, no Coaxing. Was it naught but the curse of the road, driving those who were bound to walk it alone to madness for want of company?

His fingers itched. Something was stirring wildly beneath his skin, as though, merely by speaking the name, the energy of the _faerzress_ moved dark and restless within him, fighting to escape. Surely it was the presence of the Drow that had unbalanced him thus- him, and all the magics within and without him, too. He yearned to flee, to let the road carry him where it willed while his fingers soothed the magic on the strings of his harp, but Nicholyte's gaze, pale and sharp and piercing as shards of glass and ice, bored into his back, forcing him to pause, to take in fully the soft, dagger-edged words. His sense of caution may have taken leave of him, but the one thing he would never be witless enough to do was keep his back to one disturbed near to anger. Especially when that one was one of the Dark Ones. Even he wasn't nearly so foolish as _that_.

He kept his frame loose as he turned back, long rangy limbs dangling limp by his sides as though he were a man of straw. Sometimes the stance was a mocking one, but now he meant it only to reassure (and, of course, to assure _himself_ that the Drow would have as little reason to harm him as possible). 'Twas not yet time for the truth, but he could see now the elf had precious little by way of a sense of humor...and not even humor so much as irony. Humor, he hadn't even tried, and now he dared do no such thing. And irony? To the depths with it. Best if he just spoke plain...that is, assuming he remembered how.

"Pr'aps," he replied, taking care to soften the customary dry edge to his tone. "Or pr'aps I 'ear only wor I wan' to 'ear. Whispers in th' wind, an' I call i' th' counsel o' th' dead.

"I'm a fool, y'see, sir," he said, softening his voice still more till it was little more than a whisper as he walked back to face the thunder-faced Drow. "Wor I've go' by way o' knowledge isn' me own, now, is i'? Mem'ries passin'. Scenery passin'. I tek th' words of others, pu' it into poem an' song. Dunno wor i' means, o' nothin'. Just 'ear i'. Pass it along. D'ye know wor I mean?"

Of course, that was not expressly true, but if he couldn't save himself by being clever, he could just as well do by playing at being stupid. 'Twas all one, really.

 **The dark elf's eyes lost their sharp edge, softening instead into a disarmed curiosity that seemed to realize what stood before him was no threat. Nicholyte's posture relaxed then he nodded in a sort of understanding. "By your former speach, I had taken you for a wandering wizard or a warlock.." He shakes his head once as if dispersing a fog of dark memory. "But forgive me, it is only that my caution has yet to prove unwarranted."**

 **He offered a half spirited smile. And with a soft crunch of the gravel beneath his leather boots( made of a Quaggoth's thick hide). His scale mail skirt was heavy and narrow. Falling just below his knees as its soft jingling melody making as his long legs slowly strode towards his "road companion". He stopped within reach. Broad shoulders(thicker then most elves) were burdaned with weathered, scale armour and on his strong back rested a longbow and a dark quiver full of broadheads. On his squared hip hung a bone handled hand axe, before the traveller he stood tall and proud.**

 **"I feel you know of my race, better then most. You look at me with knowing eyes."**

 **His own soft; searching. "If that is so, I will have you understand that I am not one to fear as they are. That is, unless your intention is to harm..but I feel that you do not. At least you do not seem the sort." The Child of the Dark extended his arm in greeting. "I am Nicholyte."**

 **He offered no sire name or even family name.. If one knew the Drow, it could only mean disinheritence or banishment. Or even worse.**

 **He notes the bard's hesitation as fear, stepping backward a step as if too close. "I do believe I understand of what you speak. So much of this world lies in mystery. How does one make easy sense of it?"**

Jago eyed the outstretched arm of the Drow with no small amount of amusement, but he kept any trace of it clear from his face. No sense, really, in reminding the earnest young pup that he'd introduced himself already. Let him figure that out for himself. He'd proven to have some sort of working brain behind those solemn pale eyes and the thick, weathered armor- a head for philosophy, at the very least, and there was no denying that that was an encouraging thing to see in one of his sort, so notorious as said sort was for being too brutally serious and pragmatic to give that sort of musing much thought.

"Gen'rally speakin', one doesn't," he replied congenially, electing to acknowledge the clumsy attempt at civility with an airy tilt of his head rather than a move to close the distance between them. "Y' kin tek mystery as i' comes, an' let i' remain precisely tha', an' sometimes tha's...th' best you'll ever ge'." He couldn't speak for the Drow, but mystery had always served him well when digging up tales and spells and songs. What folk didn't know and didn't understand was far more interesting than what they did. Made for better stories, that. The unknown. The fantastical. The forgotten. What was the point of listening to what you already knew to be indisputable fact, had seen and heard a hundred times over?

Of course, there were some mysteries that simply couldn't remain unsolved, and all yielded knowledge of some sort. It was simply a matter of discerning what knowledge would be useful and what would get you killed. ...Well. Perhaps the matter was not quite so simple as that. Still, the pup spoke of sense as one who had experienced its lack profoundly and had thoroughly disapproved of that experience. Best keep things simple for him if that were true.

"Th' world's a shambles, Sir Fey," he remarked, sauntering lithely over to stand beside the Drow, pushing down the surge of primal fear that rose hot and thick in his throat and placing one bony hand, calloused and scratched and darkened with sun and dirt, onto the elf's plated shoulder. "'Ow would you mek sense of i'? Through th' words y' speak so calmly? Th' weapons upon your back? Or summat else alt'gether?"

 **A moment passes over the Drow's eyes, like the shadow of a cloud shading the sun. He looks still as stone with the eyes of an elder, secrets untold dancing like pagan children behind his mind's eye. Nic turns that gaze the to look into the depth of Jago's soul and the shrug that follows the sigh is one he seemed to have learned to express himself or rather as a means of imitating the mortals whom he found himself in company.**

 **"I make no sense of it nor try to, stranger. This world is impossable, its boundries impassable and the people that now dwell here often defy imagination.. One can only rely on ones own instincts and learned understanding. I think to make sense of this world, would be a task similiar to one attempting to tame the seas."**

 **Nic's ashen face stood out against the cloudy day profiling him. His skin pinked from the sun earlier was taut, pulling around his pale eyes and sullen mouth. He looked in pain, as if it was as constant a companion as his own heartbeat.**

Had anyone else spoken those words, he might have applauded, slow and soft like a low, mocking laugh, at so sententious a turn of phrase. Coming from the Drow, the formal words sounded unexpectedly, incongruously emotional, dropping careful and measured and weighty like stones into a well from those taut, thin lips. There was more going on behind the pale eyes of his companion than he had seen...though certainly he could have guessed at the presence of some sort of pain had he chosen to put his mind to the task. A dark elf walking the land above, looking not half so much like his stony brethren as the rangers who roamed the roads in daylight, his shoulders bowed by more than heavy armor, steps dogged by a greater weight than that of any chain mail. Aye, it was easy enough to _guess_. Not quite so easy to put into practice the fact that he had done without letting that on.

"Y'speak masterly," he said softly, removing his hand from the Drow's plated shoulder and turning his own gaze back to the misted road before them, stretching gray and bleak past the point where his eyes could discern path from cloud. "No sea kin be tamed; no world won over. T' survive, 's about all y'kin 'ope for. 'T try an' mek sense o' one thing or two pertainin' t' your own self, 's all. D'you think that's so?"

Perhaps he merely rambled at this point, in trying to get the fellow to speak beyond his maxims. But the words of the bards of old flooded his mind just then, begging to be given voice, and were he alone on this desolate road, oh, he would listen, would give in. _Imtheochaidah soir is siar a dtainig ariamh, an ghealach is an ghrian. Fol lol the doh fol the day fol the doh, fol the day. Imtheochaidh an ghealach's an ghrian; An Daonine og is a chail 'na dhiadh. Fol lol the doh fol the day fol the doh, fol the day... I will go east and west, from whence came the moon and the sun. The moon and the sun will go, and the young man with his reputation behind him_...there was a song in the heart of this day, with its dreich afternoon sky and its newfound companion of such dark seeming.

 **Nicholyte's legs pulled themselves after his companion, steady and thoughtful as his tongue sought words to speak.**

 **"I. Know not what I seek but I think that is somthing all do. I am not alone in this but..**

 **It is I believe none are alive that can call themselves content with their lot..."**

 **His tone softens to a whisper, his heart hesitating in the half reflection of silence being a wiser choice.**

 **"What is it you seek?...Purpose?"**

 **He remains a pace behind the other, his steps solid and decided as a shadow tone of unsurety coloured his measured footfalls. Still silent...**

 **The length of his angled ears curl backward as his brows fall. He was treading a memory.**

 **His steps slow to a frozen standstill; stiffened bitterly, gazing deeply ahead and beyond.**

 **Then as sudden of a spell it was, it passes; warmth looseing his posture, releasing his stolen breath. He glances up into the back of his companion, hoping the spell was too quick for his keen eyes to notice the blink of hesitation; the halt, the silence..**

 **At times the Drow was known to freeze up. His thoughts, everything. When these "attacks" occur, it was difficult to free himself from such sudden grips of some interriorized terror; tthat chose at any time to assail him. A dark heart clenching in horror at times that's savagry drove his boiling blood to his eyes and a raging scream to his throat; a hazard of his barbarian blood that at times attempted to take what little good he managed to wrest from himself and return him to his base instints. To the primal nature deep inside him..**

 **(Flashing back to years before...a thirteen year old drowling stands trembling. His young, pale face a shroud of frustration and bloodlust, his shirtless back slick with sweat as his brothers heft their wooden staves contemptuously.. Father stands by, unheeding to the red welts branding his youngest son's back and legs.**

 **"Again." He says. The young drow shudders, bracing with the hiss like a dragon.**

 **The brothers swing and boil his blood anew.**

 **He is taught to use desparation to drive all thought, all fear, all worry into Reaction. Into Instinct.)**

 **(The memory fades. He returns to the present plane of mind.)**

 **He takes a moment to unstring his water bladder, tipping its belly to the sky as he downs a long draught. To clear his head...**

 **With further thought, Nic seemed to notice that with each question he asked after the stranger, the more questions he would invite to himself. An idea he was not fond of at this moment.**

 **So letting his caution get the best of him, he waves a pale hand dismissivly. "Forgive my questions, I wish not to tarry your own journey nor to linger here any longer." He stows his water skin and strengthens the stride of his steps. Leading them onward..**

Jago let the Drow overtake him; the fellow was striding along as though some invisible enemy, some dread beast of memory and shadow, was chasing him hungrily down. He breathed a near-silent sigh of relief as he felt the raw wind hit his back with all its sluggish strength, as opposed to being blocked by the warm solidity of another being. He had never been one to turn his back to anything or anyone; had always preferred greatly to do the following rather than be followed. Trusting anyone but one's own self to watch one's back was a fool's errand...a lesson he had learned too late.

But. _That's all in the past, as they say_. It was in the past, and the past was where it would stay. Nevertheless, he let his own steps slow, contemplation pulling at them like lead weights as he watched the Drow plow inexorably forward. He had not missed that momentary hesitation in the other's step: the minute hitch in the rhythm dogging at his heels, that bespoke of either memory, or pain, or the two intertwined...or perhaps something else altogether, but whatever else that _something_ could be was not a possibility operating at the forefront of his understanding of human nature. Well...elven nature, really. But. 'Twas all one.

A monster, aye; there was that, but it was one of the mind's construction. It was that which pushed the fellow to retract his own questions- bit of a blessing, that, for one could only wax philosophical for so long without growing weary of the task- and to flee from the scene of his own foray into some unspoken past like an animal from its prey when beset upon by a human presence. And he was curious, alright; no man with any healthy modicum of curiosity in him wouldn't be, when faced with the conundrum that was this sort of fellow, so bluntly plain and open, yet hidden within some dark maze of his own making at once. Still, every instinct he had ever possessed and honed insisted that he not press the matter. There was a time fit for pressuring someone to speak and reveal, and there was a time to keep mum and let the other person spill their souls at the tempo set by their own instincts and souls. This, he thought, was the latter time, and so he merely put his flute to his lips and began to play softly, the gentle notes drifting off into the darkening sky like petals on the wind.

 **It was a time of quiet travel, the elf choosing to lead them both along, his pace slowing to a more steady beat.(the music looked as though it calmed him somewhat) And so it was a time before he spoke.**

 **"I go to Coastwatch. Does your business carry you there as well?" A searching look he cast over his shoulder; his attempt to begin conversation seemed a gesture to appologize for his abrupt behavior. " I ask because this road will part soon, and to where I go, there is only one destination."**

 **The sun peeked through the clouds, stretching golden arms down to his earth, lighting the world with a heartfelt cheer. The elf's eyes winced, and a shoulder hunched unconciously. The breeze blowing gently across the midday trail.**

 **Nicholyte shrugs lightly. " Or perhaps you would like to break camp, and decide then where you are to tread?" The drow's brows are dark and deep but his eyes seemed to have lightened a good deal. He must have put his demons behind him.**

 _Coastwatch_. How many years had it been since he'd set foot on the road to the Southern sea? Eight, was it? Perhaps ten? So very many of his earlier days had been spent roaming the villages of the North and the East, and then there were those nine years... _lost_ \- for they _were_ lost, to him, and they certainly didn't merit thinking about now. _Damn it all_ , he did himself wrong to even consider that time... _those times_.

Enough. _Enough. Hold your peace, I pray you; think nothing at all and say even less_. At least he'd said nothing aloud; the air about the two of them stirred with nothing more than the rustling breeze and the fading echoes of the Drow's cautious query- right. That. To follow his companion of dubious regard and suspicious manner not mitigated by the softening of pale eyes, or to split and make off east...or west, or...anywhere but South. Mind, he had absolutely nothing against the South, aside from not knowing it well enough to have any immediate advantage over whatever he might encounter there. He had been to the East often enough in his time. As for the West...last time he'd been, the two Western towns had been fighting bitterly in hopes of resolving some obscure bone of contention. Likely politically based somehow, though he had never bothered himself much about _that_ ; his life was too free-flowing and full of constant motion to grow roots on any one region or its political ideas. In any case, he wasn't particularly keen on going back until that little dispute had smoothed itself over...whenever, _if_ ever, the towns got it into their stubborn heads to do precisely that. That, of course, was a very large 'if.'

So. That left the North and the South. Trouble was, he'd come from the North, and it would be a right barmy thing for him to turn back the way he'd come when the road was so empty for such long stretches. In town, at least, he could earn a bit of coin...and a drink, besides, which he'd sorely missed these past weeks spent out of the company of a decent tavern. Call it a vice, if you like, but he preferred to see it as a...temporary respite, perhaps? Some such gaudy thing, sure.

South it was, then. Still, no need to let the Drow think he was following merely for following's sake...though of course he _was_ , since a traveller without routes would follow only the wind, if not some bosom compatriot...or whatever the talk-shy, glowering, more-than-slightly afflicted Elven counterpart of said bosom compatriot would be called. Something to ponder along the way, that.

"M' business, as y' call i,' carries me where it will," he said flippantly, twirling his flute deftly between his fingers. "Righ' now, i' wills me South, an' so I'll go 'long wi' ye, if y' don't mind, Sir Fey. Too early now t' break any sor' of camp, I reckon." The golden traveller's rule, that. Never waste daylight, even if there's none to speak of for the clouded sorrow of the skies on any given day.

 **Nicholyte looked deep into the traveler's eyes. A stirring of knowing had touched him this whole while. It was a familiar sense of interior understanding, that one can look into another and see a image of recognition, like a desert mirage..**

 **He caught the hesitation in his companion, observing the subtle changes in his stance and posture, as unspoken words and nimble thoughts flickered behind this Jago's eyes. The man's lips were for the most part pressed in the semblance of a gentleman's smile. He twirled his instrument without care or effort but the motion looked as if it were an attempt to disuade ones deeper reflection. It was a careless gesture from one who to most would appear carefree and genuine... but all that this man did seemed to lack the heart of it; a magician twirling his long fingers, a thief whirling his open palm in a show of innocence, a gleaming white tooth smile and giggle as one would pick your pockets dry. Motions. Illusions. Thing charicteristic of troubled souls and secret keepers, who wish you to see and believe one thing while they mean another entirely.**

 **Now he did not see this one as neccessarily dangerous, just... fleeting. Or frightened. His soul felt sick with loss or trouble.**

 **What he noted most definitly were the hollow orbs of his eyes, as most mortals and surface dwellers have a light in them; the light of the soul that shines through the eyes, especially when they were truely happy or full of vigor, of life. Now this man had a different bearing, one of a man beyond his years, one fallen on cruel times who wished none to know what lay behind his cheery masq.. Yes, he saw the haunting darkness in the dark of the pupil; where instead of a glimmer or sparkle, there was only blackness. The skeloton of a smile that never filled out the cheekbones. A tendancy to flit his eyes to and fro as if wary or perhaps used to sudden conflict. As if he would bolt at the first sign of trouble...**

 **Nicholyte felt an understanding for this, and his pity was kindled. A sad thing to encounter in one who had not even hairs of silver on his head-but not as if this were somthing this Drow had not yet seen in his long years alive. It was however worth the soft sigh of acknowledgement that passed through his gently flared nostrals.**

 **"Very well, Songson. So long as my company is not opposed to your taste, I have no such discrepency." Nicholyte understood the land dweller's love of light but the sun had already pressed his discomfort into poor tolerance; his nose and foreface were pink and stinging, his pale lashed eyes blinking often. "But I ask if traveling in the foremorning and early evenings would be disagreeable to you. It is only that I am not found of the noonday Sun. His gaze is not kind."**

 **Now Nicholyte's foremost curiosity with this one, was why he seemed content to journey with one like himself. It was strange, but at the same time he supposed not many Drow were to be found under the noon day sun. Perhaps the thought he was seeking new slave sights... Ahh, his memory of his youth; many slaving raides rushed in the midnight hours. Sleeping men, women and children torn from their beds. Milled into wagon cages. Carted to the upperdark and to their new life of labor and dark sorrow. Yes he had not pitied them, feeling a cruel joy fed by his brothers. His blood had enjoyed those days before but he now that he gazed back in the deep, he often felt sorrow or remorse. He knew he had done as all of his kind had ever before time, and granted he had once been proud of their terror and screams. But now it was not so.. It had been what he knew and so he could not regret such things when he knew nothing else. But he would never do so again. He had been an elfling of 15...**

There was no feeling in the world more discomfiting than that of being read. Avandra knows he'd exploited and instilled in others that ubiquitous crawling fear often enough: gazing deeply into the eyes of those he met, taking in every subtle movement and flash of expression, letting his music wash over them as they stood enraptured by eyes like blank mirrors and storing away the song of the secrets kept within. To have that done _to_ him- _again_ \- was proving just as perturbing as it was vexing, especially when he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no magic involved. Bloody tosser of an elf had to go about prying into the personal business he'd endeavored to keep hidden, and he didn't even have the bloody decency to get his information dishonestly. Bloody bollocks, was what that was.

Still, there was something in the lingering echoes of the fellow's sigh that bade him hold off on the hostility, the confrontation, even the deflection, that his impulse, incensed by whatever it was that his treacherous face and body had divulged, yearned to fling at him. The corners of the proudly curved mouth softened, the appraising pale gaze shuttered and stilled, and for a moment Jago thought he glimpsed pity in the Drow before it was replaced once again by the searing burn of memory.

And yet...no. 'Twas not that. Not pity, there, but a sort of knowing, of understanding...and all at once, like a flood wave breaking through a splintered dam, the fury in him rose higher than ever. Some demon in his mind, the empty husk of a child forced to grow too old too fast, laughed, a high, thin, brittle sound like breaking glass, a frightened sound, a mad sound, and only the weight of long years of practice kept him from wincing to hear it. _Understanding_ , his _arse_. There was nothing for the Drow to _understand_. What was he, what were _they_ , but barbaric, brutal, merciless creatures, drawing so many into their bitter darkness with the cold pleasure of those whose hearts had been so long crushed beneath stone and shadow that only shards and scatterings of dust remained?

...But _him_...he was not there. Not down below, in that cesspit of misery and drudging toil and desperate death by the day, but _here_ , in the light, where his kind were little welcomed and cared less to rove. The demon had worn its laughter thin and had taken up a fretful humming instead, and suddenly the song locked onto the Drow's heart-song and he could _see_ \- see how the flashes of memory in his companion's eyes coalesced, forming images of armored, long-eared, long-haired beasts heaving men and women and children from their slumbers, figures bound and gagged piled in dark wagons, chained shadows laboring away at the walls of the caves as whips stung their corded, burning muscles and the gleeful laughter of their captors seeped into the dank, cool air, a bilious black poison. _The pictures of my dreams, pictures of his thoughts_... And there was sorrow, there, beneath the waking visions soaked in blood. Sorrow for all that had come before, buried beneath a fervent desire to keep such acts as far from his future as possible.

 _Understanding_. It was the sharing of a vision, of a past, and it was... _it was_. The brief spell had drained him, the more so for the effort spent towards making sure it went unnoticed by any innate magical sense the Drow might possess, but the demon had been silenced, lulled to sleep by the warm weight of that shared understanding. Fortunate, that. He had neglected the Drow's words for far too long.

"Early mornin' an' evenin' suits me just 's well 's any other time, friend," he said, beginning to walk once again, whistling absently as he did. "But you're gearin' yerself up for a longer journey than y' might wish, leavin' th' daylight 'ours untouched. 'Ave ye no cloak abou' ye, that y' might 'ide yourself from th' sun's light?"

 **The elf gives the man's thoughtful consideration a pause of due respect before he answers. His sharp brow easing in a feeling almost akin to worry. His companion seeming strongly troubled in the length of his silences and the unsteady pattern of his breath; held for long moments then released quickly, dispelling the air with impatient thrusts of the lungs.**

 **Nicholyte's hair drifted over each shoulder as he shook his head. "I do not have a cloak with me." His slender hand angles towards the road. "I can continue on, should need or impatience inkindle your footsteps but had I the choice I would not journey whilst the sun enjoys his vengence."**

 **His words were soft spoken, not impatient or accusing. It was only that his manner and word choices left lityle room for interpretation, he was direct and pointed and his intention(and focus) singular. Like the bead of a drawn bow, set on its target and tought-ready at any moment.**

 **His head falls gently to the side in careful question, his lips persed as if in hesitation even as his nimble eyes flitted to glance behind Jago's shoulder before returning to his eyes.**

 **"That is if you are not pressed..." his tone nuetral.**

"No' pressed 't all, me" he replied, sliding his flute back into his pocket and gently slinging his pack off of his shoulder, taking care not to jostle the strings of the harp upon his back as he did so. That, at least, was the truth; little sense in making mention of the fact that the wanderlust sang bright in his blood without pause, pushing him ever back to the journey and the road. The fellow had read enough into him as it was, was likely attempting to do so even now, and frankly, he was bloody sick of it. The _one_ person with whom he could least afford to be an open book was picking _something_ out of the air and music of his breaths and silences with alarming ease and alacrity. Boded ill, that did.

Well, nothing for it now. At the very least, the Drow had proven himself to be a less irksome traveling companion than most, despite his arrow-straight focus and inability to waver from any sort of purpose to which he'd set himself to...though really, such steadfastness was, perhaps, a thing to be admired in most. That being said, limiting their travel time to the mean hours was hardly the greatest inconvenience one could suffer out on the open road. The pup really was a bloody mug, though, going about the daylight hours without so much as a scarf to protect himself from the sun, let alone the full masks that the rest of his kindred seemed so fond of when traversing the upper lands. Or perhaps that was only... _no. Abandon that train of thought right where it lies, new-born and wriggling and crying at the light. Keep it out of sight, out of heart, out of mind_.

So. He could remedy his own thoughts, and likewise he could remedy the oversight of the fellow with whom he walked. Deft fingers undid the buckled straps of his pack, felt around for one of the scarves he always kept within. Really, they were meant to be juggled, or else used for disguise, but they worked as garments well enough, and there was no bloody way he'd give the Drow his cloak, no matter that the air was not so cold as it ought to have been for the season and was growing steadily warmer.

"I've no objection, m' good Sir, t' your way o' travel," he said, draping the silky black cloth over his forearm as he did up the straps and slung the pack back over his shoulder. "Neverth'less, I think y' ough' to 'ave this t' tide y'o'er. We c'n keep t' your 'ours aright, bu' should we find ourselves pushed t' venture out in daylight, you'll need summat more 'n your lovely 'air t' shield yer eyes n' other bits. Scarf's a shield, innit? Gi' us a try."

 **This gesture of kindness following such a quip of amusement, almost brought a smile to the drow's sharpish continence. His features rested into an expression that one might express as "touched-surprise". How many a traveler would care to provide an elf-a dark one such as he-with a such a care for his cursed skin?**

 **He was briefly at a lose for words, only nodding(almost shyly) in a form of accepting this gift, barely managing to loose his tongue enough to say. "Indeed, traveller. You are quite right."**

The mood of the Drow had lightened considerably, he thought, as the scarf changed hands and the pair resumed their steps once more. Such a strange thing it was, to glimpse even the barest trace of a smile upon those features of marble stone there. A mere quirk of the lips, it was, what pleased sentiment it ought to have contained hidden behind the shadowed, cautious stillness of one unaccustomed to and untrusting of having his well-being seen to, but it was enough, and the song of the air changed key, hitting a milder, gladder note as the beams of sunlight filtering through the heavy clouds strengthened almost imperceptibly in their effulgent glow.

"Right I am, Sir, for, 's I reckon, 'twas no' me left 'and that 'eld yer gift ou' t' ye," he quipped. Emboldened but slightly by the tenuous peace that had danced over the fellow's countenance, he lengthened his stride, tossing a quick, rakish grin over his shoulder at his companion as he did so. "Use i' well, a'right? Let i' suffer in your stead. Reckon i' won' do much 'arm." Pausing again to let his companion catch up, he flicked the strand of braided bones woven into his hair over his shoulder, whistling a low note to match the pitch of the _clack_ his fingers made against its dry surface. "Shall we on a'ead? Or would ye rather rest yer eyes a bit? Sun's comin' out summat fierce, 't is."

 **"It is harsh.." Nic agreed. His delicate eyes shrunkin by the bloated rays that drown his sensitive vision.**

 **On a cloudy or overcast day travel was reletivly tolerable. His long years adapting his vision to such volumes of lumination gave him a greater tolerance then most drow alive, but it did not mean the moon-eater did not cause him pain for his defiance of nature. His pale eyes yellowed with the strain begged for the solace of shade and shadow, the children of darkness; his sister kin... Nic lifted the scarf carefully over his brow, concealing a sigh of cool relief with a nod. "I would like a moment of rest. We may continue on afterwards." Meaning that to take a bit of shade now would provide enough time for the sun to reach its peak, a worthy excuse to close his eyes for a brief medition. The night road had been long the night before...**

The relief coursing through the Drow's veins was nearly tangible on the air as he dragged the scarf over his face, so Jago was reasonably certain that he hadn't imagined that faint sigh that had gone unvoiced. Little wonder, really; the heavy clouds of the hours before had parted in earnest, and the light of midday was harsh even on his own eyes. Hardened to the glare of sun and snow as they once had been...years in darkness wreaked havoc on one's ability to tolerate light. ...On the other hand, the Drow had lived his life in darkness for more decades than the bard himself had years, like enough. No sense in taking things out of perspective. Granted, all of his illusions worked to distort that. But. No sense in its doing in the here and now.

"A moment o' rest's a'right wi' me," he replied, quickly scanning the road and surrounding forest for any signs of life. Finding nothing, he loped over to a willow tree about fifteen paces off the path, nodding his head over towards the shade beneath its trailing branches. "This a'right wi' ye? Dark enough, innit?"

Truth be told, he wasn't at all unappreciative of the moment of respite. The energy of the magics had settled somewhat since he had initially come upon the Drow, but its restless stirring had not faded away completely, and only music could hush its fitful mutterings in his blood and bones.

 **Nicholyte's eyes were tied on the road the way they had come, his stance taut like a wary stag.**

 **The wind curled through the air about them, and the tune the bard listened to was accented by a soft voice, singing on the deep of the breeze...**

 **The dark elf stood a moment longer before his strong neck dragged his gaze from beyond to the foremost to that before him. He answered. "Any shadow is sufficiant.." his voice was mildly raised over the short distance, which he covered quickly. He ducked gratefully beneath the long fingered boughs of the old tree, passing a grey hand over his pink brow, as his body sighing into the cool air. He looked about himself once more before meeting the man's eyes. "I wish to rest for an hour. If you wish to hunt, you may but be wary of the wood. Twenty and four years have not tamed her." He nodded once, as if willing his companion to agree.**

He had to laugh at that, really. Just how young and inexperienced the pup thought he was, he knew not, but he did know this wood, sure, and he knew full well how poor the hunting would be as the hours sidled up to the prick of midday. Those creatures with any modicum of sense to them would be taking shelter from the higher heat, just as the Drow himself was now doing. The Drow who really had no business ordering him about as though he were some sort of bloody prince, doing a kindness in giving a servant leave to do as he wished for so brief a span of time. More than a bit vexing, that.

"A young wood, she is, then," he remarked, pulling himself lithely up into the branches of the willow. "Years younger 'n us both, an' wi' younger years comes a poorer 'unt, 'specially 's i's jus' shy of 'igh noon. Leave tha' t' sunset, a'right? Better luck wi' yer hour, there, pup. We've rations enough t' tide us over 'till then, I 'ope."

Settling himself on one of the tree's higher branches that still afforded him a clear view of the ground, and his companion lying prone against the grooved trunk, he pulled his harp from his back, tuning it swiftly to match the pitched whistles of the wind, whispering and wailing through the silvery leaves. Long fingers bent themselves into positions more familiar than a mother's caress, gently stroking the catgut strings and coaxing from them a slow, lilting melody mimicking the rise and fall of the breeze. He could feel the restless energy of the magic calming, flowing through him to his calloused fingertips and the strings beneath them, whispering _still, hear, listen. Hold. Protect_. It was a simple enough thing to cast the words to the ground, forming the barrier that his unarmed hands could not. The wood was young, but neither was she weak- untamed, as it were. Best be safe rather than sorry.

 **The breeze's voice moaned in tune with the gentle music man's strumming, cooing to his soothing touch like as a maiden lover sounds in his arms. The hours creeping by them both.**

 **The elf lay stretched out beneath his companion, looking like a sunbasking snake(or shade basking, mind you). Though his posture was at ease, his lean muscles relaxed, he was watching all and in a moments notice he could spring right back to his deadly feet. He was lulled into a most soothing rest by the angelic minstrel above, a luxury to have music so far from civilization to ease one's restless mind; burning with worry and anxious activity. He felt the melody seep into his very bones, twisting softly about his translucent dreams, a blissful nothing left in the wake of it.**

 **As the notes of the wind voice sang higher and with greater longing…**

The trouble with music was that it too easy a thing to get lost within. He had kept what little attention that was not transfixed with the tune and the spells it wove trained upon the Drow beneath him, rather than upon the sun, and by the time he drew his melody to a close with the hushing of the breeze, said Drow was all but dead asleep, and the sun had traced its two hours' path across the cloud-studded sky. He felt both gloriously exhilarated and ineffably drained, as he always was wont to when the music and the magic grew so strongly intertwined, and his fingers were stiff from dancing upon the strings for so long without pause. At least the Drow hadn't woken storming, trying to call him down. That was blessing enough to make up for any physical pains.

"'Rest for an hour,' 'e says," the bard muttered. Mimicking his companion's voice wasn't quite a conscious decision, but...well, that tended to happen, it did. Best just to leave it to do as it would.

Stowing the harp carefully in the strapped case on his back once more, he made his quick way down the tree, dropping the last ten feet down like a cat and turning to face the still-lying Drow. "Didn' think ye'd 'ave a kip, eh?" he asked, raising his voice just slightly, thick brows arching upward with amusement. "Right doylem, you are. Ought t' run ye down the banks proper, like! Oi." The fellow still hadn't moved. Damn it, he was nearly tempted to give him a kick. Couldn't be mithered with waking him up for too long, could he? No, sir.

"Gi' us yer 'and, like," he muttered, sending his booted foot out to tap the Drow's side and immediately dancing back, drawing his dagger from the inside if his sleeve in case the fellow got any funny ideas.

 **The dark elf twisted away from the offending foot, growling in dissapointment at having to wake. Shrugging weary sleep from his kneeling posture, Nic sighed and shook his head to clear it up.**

 **He growled again. "I'm up." As he pushed himself to stand on his stiff limbs.**

 **Dusk and shadows took forms like men, stretching themselves over the ground, growing from the towering claws of the trees above them.**

"Sure 'bou' that, are ye?" He tossed the quip out airily, not quite able to bring himself to care where the words landed or even what they were. He would never admit it aloud, but the darkness of the wood was making him nervous. By all the gods, it was but two hours past noon; no bloody way it should've gotten so dark so fast. Bloody unnatural, that was.

Really, he ought to have taken a rest himself instead of whiling away the time with the harp. Weary as he was from sustaining the spell in the song, he certainly wasn't about to cast his sense about for traces of the magic that might've brought on this sudden twilight. On the other hand, the sense itself was redundant; common sense told him enough. It wasn't merely the fact that they were further south that caused the sun to see fit to set earlier, no, sir. There was a prickling in the back of his neck, a low, thrumming whine in the magic deep in his veins. Something was wrong- and he had no idea what.

 **Nic glanced at Jago tiredly, a little irritated by the sudden skittishness of his behavior; watching the musician toss his eyes about like a horse about to bolt.**

 **"Of what are you going on about? What did you see, or perchance hear?" The dark elf gives a turn about, and without surprise finds nothing to notice, save a more gusty breeze that snapped at the air and whipped a little branch or two.**

 **The notes whining high like a lost voice in distress.**

Jago shot the Drow an irritated glare. _What was he on about_ , indeed. Well enough for him to be talking when he was so muddled from sleep that he couldn't even sense that anything was amiss. Typical bloody cave-dweller. Probably counted the darkness as a bloody blessing, he did.

"Said nothin', 'ave I?" he snapped. He'd had it up to here, he had, with the bloody pup buggering about in his mind like he was. Not his fault if the bloke was so bloody oblivious, now, was it? "Do one. Daft 'apeth. Give your 'ead a wobble, a'right?" The words flew from him unbidden, vitriol spewing forth completely beneath his notice. His focus was completely trained upon the whine of the magic, steadily increasing in pitch until it was almost painful to hear.

Clutching his dagger tightly, the bard slowly brought the blade to his lips, deliberately ignoring the fact that his hand was trembling slightly. He gently blew across the sharp steel like it was the mouthpiece of a flute, producing a soft, but piercingly high whistle. He couldn't quite remember where he'd learned the trick, but he'd always know he'd have to use it one day...and as he whistled, he felt the overbearing press of the strange magic lessen. Just slightly. But it was something.

Casting his eyes over to the Drow, who stood warily, as though unsure whether to fight or to cuff him soundly, he raised one eyebrow as he whistled again, slightly louder. "Can' tell me y' didn't 'ear tha'," he said, not bothering to disguise the heavy lilt of the dry irony he couldn't keep away. "Proper spell, tha' is. Don' s'pose ye've ever felt anythin' o' th' like?"

 **The drow did not answer the biting words from the anxious bard. He found himself unable to even speak as a sensation that felt as if his throat had been packed full with the finest wool discomforted him, though he felt no pain to speak of.**

 **With a snarl he whipped out his bow, twisting his arm and with a flick of his wrist, his lith arm strained in a full draw that brushed his long ears. He gleened the darkened glade about with the sharpish lance of his keen vision; seeking for heated figures who would appear separate from the warmth of the brush and wood.**

 **Nicholyte's throat bobbed in an effort to speak but he failed to produce sound. In vain searching for the source of such witchery... and so he did not see a twisted woodish creature separate from the undergrowth behind Jago. And with a boughish creak, it extended cruel vine wrapped hands that reached out to ensnare the bard!**

Jago thanked Avandra every day for blessing him with the senses of his elven rather than his human kin, knowing that one day those thanks would pay off. He heard the twisting, crackling groan of the vines behind him and _jumped_ , springing up into the lower branches of the willow as gnarled, twig-like hands snatched at the air that had housed his body a hair's-breadth of a moment before.

"On yer righ'!" He threw the call right into the Drow's ear- another useful trick- before training his eyes on the undergrowth. The creature wasn't blind, not so close to them as it was, and if he didn't act quickly the sodding thing would either stretch its arms up to yank him down, or go for the Drow...granted, he'd rather save his own skin, but...to lose a companion, not to mention an armed one...that simply wouldn't do.

Either this would work to send the thing packing, or else it would distract it long enough to give the pup a clear shot, or else it would drain his energy completely and leave him defenseless up off the ground. ...Well. He'd always enjoyed a gamble. The Rogue Goddess had been on his side once already. Might as well try his luck again.

Bolstering the energy of the magic inside him, he pitched the whisper right where the creature's ear ought to have been, the discordant melody made all the worse by its lack of volume, almost enough to pain even him. He whispered, sang, and prayed all the while that he wasn't imagining how the thing had frozen, head cocked and body beginning to twitch as though every note was a pinprick to its wooded flesh.

 _Shoot pup, shoot, do it now, NOW, while I can still keep this up, just SHOOT..._ And he sang, and waited for the whistle of the arrow of the creak of vines at his bough. Whichever came first.

 **If the creater's head had been crooking, it would have been to seek out the lifeforce of its lost prey... for Jago saw its woody head jerk upward and it raises both palms out towards him, and he would just make out quivering clusters of "far too large to be harmless" coniferish needles, itching to meet his flesh...**

 **-A disembodies voice rings out from the deeper wood, hollowed and drony. "Fool..."**

 **Whilst the Needle Blight below him croaks to attack-just as two saving arrows tore with a very brittle 'crack! crunch!' into its head in quick sucession.**

 **The Needlecovered Blight struggles round to face this elf assailant(who had indeed heard the bards cry) and raises its thorny hand- those terrible thorn clusters bursting like missels launched them from its body to punch a dozen wood shards into the scale armour of the elf.**

 **Nicholyte reacts, twisting half way away from the sudden attack to lessen the damage. He throws himself to the ground in a roll so smooth he couldve road an ocean wave; springing up and immediatly loosing another bolt.**

 **All of this happening faster then he could skip to, Jago feels the formerly innocent seeming vines that had been draped over the mighty willow pull themselves suddenly over his legs-they gripped hard, trying to restrain him...**

 _Deaf_. Of course, of bloody _course_ the bloody things had to be bloody _deaf_. Bloody Blights, they were, why hadn't he seen; why hadn't he _looked_?! Wasted a perfectly good spell, he had, and what had he to show for it? Bloody vines, twisting up his bloody legs. _Not bloody likely_.

Immediately he began twisting, kicking out his legs in weaving patterns almost like dance steps, just to loosen the vines enough to get his dagger beneath them. He slashed out wildly, not about to give the angrily flailing roots another chance to latch onto him. It was only a drop of ten feet to the ground from here. He'd had worse, he'd had worse-!

 _THUMP_. There. Not so painful as he'd feared. He crawled quickly along the ground, letting the Drow's deadly bolts fly over his head, which was ringing rather more loudly than it ought to have been. ...Right. The magic. He could feel its irritated buzzing within him, the weariness with which it quailed in his veins. Overextended himself, he had, and all for naught. Bloody amateur's mistake.

Still. If he was going to make stupid decisions, he might as well go all the way with them. Sending another whisper into the Drow's ear to _keep th' bolts comin', there_ , he crawled right between the Blight's legs, rolled silently over onto his back, and arched himself up from the ground to clutch at the jagged thorns forming the insides of its thighs. Wasting no time, pressing himself tight to the jagged wooded flesh of the beast, he thrust his dagger upward, right through the sensitive area he knew, or hoped he knew, resided between its legs.

 **The Blight's "sensative area" was ill protected, as had been susspected, so the blade was able to cleave itself straight up through(where in a humanoid it might have been its spleen) the bark offering so little resistance, the creature made a brittle "crackling" sound and then collapsed upon the blade and its wielder in a disentigrated pile of pollen dust and wood shaven pieces. The dust blew in the wind, swirling through the air beyond them.**

 **A disembodied voice croaks, its direction somewhere in the westward side of the road. It mocked. "Fools.. oh wretched fools.."**

 **Nic heard this and turned round again, looking for something to fill with his barbed black arrows. His ears were agitated from the magic whispers tickling his ears moments before, he didnt complain but he despised such meddlings in the core of his black heart. He didnt spare a glance but tryed to speak again to the bard, his mouth working but nothing came out. He only felt a greater burning in his eyes and a hot flush that filled his flesh with the thirst to fight and to destroy that which tested against him.**

 **The shrubbery encircling the wood, the looming trees all around are all dark and wanting. The trees above have knotted their arms to inhibit the light, or was that the mind playing tricks..?**

 **Either way, Nic knew that to bolt would be to give these creatures(or whatever creature were here) the advantage, naturally wanting to spur them to fear and flight, for he sensed their strength came from the wood itself. But as a natural hunter, he knew that against "sense" it would serve their fate better to stay in the clearing, mild as it was, for it would assist their defense.**

 **His was unsure if his companion was of the same mind now finally sparing his prone form(covered in polleny dust)a glance... but how was one to know when he could not speak?**

Well. As far as stupid ideas went, he'd certainly had worse. Granted, the world was spinning rather more than he'd have liked, and his body seemed rather ill-inclined to shift itself from its new-made prison of twigs and dust, but the mad plan had _worked_ , if nothing else. Couldn't say that every day.

 _Fools...oh, wretched fools..._ The whisper sidled laboriously through his ears as if through layers of cotton, and the part of his mind that ought to have taken up with rational thought was dazed and weary and half-delirious with exhilaration and the burning ache of the spent magic- unable, at first, to comprehend precisely what the words were or when the energy of the chilling air had changed. Something _had_ changed, though; he could feel it in his blood even as his mind remained oblivious, a strange, dark, rhythmic pulse, like the beat of war drums carrying through fog. He could feel, too, the almost animalistic fear of his companion, like the sharp slap of cold water against eyes heated and dulled from sleep, and it was the cognizance of that fear that finally pulled him from his state of mental prostration.

Ignoring the way the world tipped and darkened alarmingly around him, the bard heaved himself shakily to his feet, the remains of the Blight falling to dust around the impression of his body as he made his way over to the Drow- slowly, remaining always within his line of sight, as one would approach a spooked animal. He dared not cast his Sense about, fearing total collapse if he did, but he had eyes, well enough, and trained them on the branches overhead uneasily. His mind might've been more than a bit addled, but he was certain he had not imagined the way those branches seemed to twine around each other, their slow, quiet creaks sounding ineffably pained and brittle, like mad laughter, above their heads. The Drow had seen it, too- that wary, hunted look in his wildly rolling pale eyes spoke volumes that his cracked lips could not. They were trapped.

Nicholyte's eyes and wavering bow-hand, muscles corded too tightly in their fervent desire to release the arrow the white-knuckled fingers clutched, told him all he needed to know. They were trapped here, sure. But. To stay and fight would serve them better than to turn tail and run, for if evil thoughts ran one way, it was that the chase was far more valuable, far more _enjoyable_ , than the catch. And there was no mistaking the aura about these... _things_ , even without a functioning Sense. Pure evil, that. Pure, bitter, gleefully unadulterated evil.

Really, the only sensible thing to do was to do what the creatures did not quite expect. "T' th' death with 'em, think you?" he murmured, flicking Blight dust off of his dagger with a swipe to the air that made the blade sing, a single clear tone ringing through the ominously still air like a bell- of joy, of mourning, or of warning, he had yet to know which.

 **The fever of the drow's rage was cooled by the cold eagerness of what may be ahead. He was unafraid of harm to himself or to pain. He was a child of suffering and there was somthing addictive in the rush of addrenaline that came from blood spilt and dancing with death. His eyes were white with wild life as the met the grey of Jago's. He crooked a twitched grin and nodded, the motion one of a soloemnity; like a graveyard bell tolling.**

 **Just as the whole of the west wood showed a dozen more humanoid shadows forms birthing from her depths..**

 **Nic's arm stretched back again and with a single long stride, he put himself between the hoard and his companion then his face a masq of snarling white teeth, he pulled two arrows to his ear and fired and fired again.**

 **The willow's curling vines dripped of of her and twisted together to form another creature. The voice calling again, darker and mocking. "Fools.."**

Some irrational part of him was eyeing the Drow with naked fascination, begging his sense of reason to let it compose some epic about that dark figure brought so forcibly to the light, snarling in defiance with the bowstring drawn to one long ear as though it were born to rest upon its pallid surface. That selfsame sense of reason, of course, merely berated his poet's sense for harboring such fancies in a time of war, and railed against the lack of long-range weapons about his own person. Loudly. Times such as these were not made for subtlety.

"Fools, fools indeed we be, caught so off guard as we are!" The words were aimed at the Blight forming in the twisting vines of the willow, and his right hand held the dagger loosely, sweeping out expansively, a gesture that, for all anyone could see, screamed _helpless, inept, not a threat in the least_. His left, meanwhile, flashed in and out of an inner pocket of his coat faster than an elven eye could blink. He had always known it was best to keep his tools about his person rather than in his pack. One never knew when they might grow useful.

Five lit candles arched through the air, their quivering flames casting small, dancing shadows along the ground. No magic in the web of the pattern, but he had practiced with the squat tallow stumps enough that to make them into boomerangs was not so difficult a task as it could have been. Long fingers flicked outward, and the fourth candle, crooked little thing though it was, flew outward and caught the waving end of the creature's gnarled hand before winging back to his hand. No time, though, to pause and savor the crackle of the vines as they began to smolder and ignite. Spinning hard, he flung all five candles out and flicked his blade back up into its sheath on his forearm, ignoring the twinges of pain from the rough slide- nicked him, the bloody thing had- and sticking the burning match in his mouth. The candles returned, and suddenly the clearing was illuminated in a blaze of red light as those creatures bold (or stupid- difficult to tell which) enough to move in closer were struck by the flames. _Bugger_ all, but this was fun. Mad, foolish, and likely to cause death, sure, but fun all the same. No wonder the Drow, pale eyes trained on the shapes forming farther away, looked so wildly excited.

 **Nic whipped his sensative eyes from the sudden bright flame and the heat, throwing up an arm to block the blinding light. He growled, swapping his bow for his javlin pike, wielding it one handed so his other was free to block the flame. His voice broke free with a cough and his rabid continence drank in the sight. "Well done." He rasped, spinning his weapon in readiment.**

 **All the creatures were crackling in flames, but not without their own retaliation. The circle of blights writhed and creaked in agony, then in an desparate last act spewed forth their needle missals, every one of them orange with infernal heat. The hot shards of wood launched at Nic and Jago, peppering them with piercing hot projectiles.**

 **Nic jerked away, having been blinded he had not seen the assault. He dove away, avoiding the second volley but the flames were catching to the willow's leaves and the flames only grew brighter, causing him to brace blind.**

 **"Jago, take care-I cannot see!" He wove his javlin before him like a twirling shield-**

 **But the flamed vine blight groans in a gutteral undertone, then all at once brush , shrubs and old roots twist themselves up between Nic and Jago. The vine blight advances towards Jago even as the flaming willow starts shaking in pain, and the needle blights start softly "crackling!" and "popping!", collapsing to the earth dead.**

He thanked the gods a hundred times over that the needles were glowing as vibrantly as they were, for the smoke coming from the writhing Blights rolled in chokingly thick, making it nearly impossible to breathe and even more difficult to see. He hit the ground, hands dropping the candles and flying up to cover his head as the burning missiles sailed above him. One glanced off of the back of his bent wrist, and only the desperate shouts of the Drow, and the ominous creaking of twigs and roots, kept him from roaring aloud in pain. Time enough for that once all the blighted buggers were properly dead. ...Blighted. Bit of a pun, that, and not that bad of one, besides. Best write it down.

All but two of the candles, those he'd kept closest to his head, had been extinguished; it was with almost desperate speed that he picked those remaining tallow stalks up as he whirled to face the vine Blight that lurched towards him, its final, frenzied stab at triumph before the flames that were licking at its wooded heels caught. The match was gone- likely he'd swallowed it while landing- but its heat seemed to ignite every fiber of his being, a quick burn of hard, unfeeling strength. The grin that canted his thin-lipped mouth was a sharp one, tinged with something almost approaching madness as he swapped the candles from hand to hand, twin points of light swirling through the air with dizzying speed.

"I know y'kin understand me," he said to the approaching Blight, almost conversationally. "D'ye see wor 'appened t'your brethren, there, an' yer li'l master with 'em? Burnin' t' th' ground like tha'? Don' look too pleasant 't all- least, no' t' me." The Blight had stopped, the mass of vines it tried to pass off as a head tilting warily to one side, and really, it was a simple enough thing to step forward and drive the candles right into the center of the thing's hollow body, dancing lights becoming knives in the blink of an elven eye. Step, stab, and a bit of a push-pull, one hand ripping the flames down between its legs, the other going up through the head to cleave the body in two. Alright, so the flames licked at him a bit, but he had learned from fire-eaters the world over since he was but a lad- besides the which, the gurgling, crackling, groaning song of the creature's death-throes made a music whose terrible beauty made the sting worth its while a thousand times over.

"Why don' ye tell your little master that 'is time's well enough up, friend," he hissed, grin widening as his singed fingers stroked the still-burning candles, only slightly the worse for wear, and his mind sang a thousand praises to Avandra for this stroke of mad luck. "If you're no' too busy dyin', o' course."

 **The willow screached once, the flames having reached her branches burst forth from her and she shook her branches, causing a great wind. A great wind that drove the ashen remains of her children up into the air, swirling it round her-once-twice-then like a hurricane gale it roared towards the bard! The force was blinding, stinging particles of burnt wood ash that blinded the eyes and tasted like blood and black earth. Fine enough powder that one could choke on a single breath of it.**

 **The vine creature took its last advantage of its dark mother, and with its dying strength it lashed out with a transformed vine whip-a crack later, it slashed this burning lash across the blinded bard! Then it drew back for another blow-**

 **But Nic cryed out, leaping high up and over the dark shrubery with his javlin pike raised high. Just as the blight raised its head to the dark shadow falling upon him, the drow's javlin's head drove into its throat and both crashed to the ground. All his weight raised and pinning it on its back, the blight could only hiss before Nic dragged the ripping blade through its throat-chest-then out from between its twisted ruinous legs. The blight managed a twitch and then gutteral groan before it fell back in dead silence..**

 **Silence fell upon the wood around them, broken only by save the ragged breathing of the dark elf, a thick blind snarl curling his flame cast features; his rasping accented by the occassional snap and pop of the burning willow.**

 _It was dark. It was dark, and the darkness had fangs, tearing and clawing at slicing at everything it could touch like the icy daggers of the Northern winds. Thick, 'twas, chokingly so, tasting of smoke and stone and soil, of iron-tanged blood gone sour with disease. That_ thing, _whatever it was, was not dead, not yet,_ damn it all, _he had failed, failed,_ again, _worthless sod_...

The lash of the flaming whip across his chest and shoulder was nearly a mercy, if only because the pain of it stopped his fool brain from thinking. The world was dark and hot and silent but for the roaring in his ears, as it would be around one of the ritual Fires, and that, at least, was familiar. Dimly he felt himself falling to one knee, what little extra strength the adrenaline had afforded him leached from his body by the bruising gale, and brushing a handful of damp earth over the flames that were licking at the leather of his jerkin. He was just barely aware of the Drow, standing stock-still over the Blight like a stone statue, his chiseled features carved into a bestial growl, his pike held aloft, bobbing up and down with his heaving breaths- of the tree, flames snapping at its grooved bark, burnt leaves and ash falling to the ground like tears. Of the magic, curled prostrate in his veins like some feeble, sick animal, weighing him down so that he felt he might never rise again. Of low, ragged, shallow breaths that fought with the dust of the vines for space in his lungs, and of his own voice, whispering words unable to be deciphered- be they congratulations to the elf, or songs, or prayers, or simply the mad ramblings of one whose sense had deserted him one time too many, he knew not, nor could bring himself to care- before all went silent again and he was aware of no more.

 **Nicholyte sat before a cold campfire, his long legs folded beneath him, crouched should hw need to rise quickly, but otherwise at ease. He gazed at the midnight heavens, letting his unending adoration of the stars take him without rein into the depths of the dark star speckled sky, journeying with his bright imagination from constellation to constellation...**

 **He let his mind wander, tendering itself through obsidian colored memories, in his years growing used to the surface land, so apart from those he would have had, had his family remained under the matriarch rule, a dark secret of his race...**

 **His eyes flitted over the to the east as a falling star shot across the sky, his smile so light it faded before reaching his eyes.**

 **A deep sigh animated his stone still form, not in peace but in resolution. But he found his gaze falling on his friend who lay stretched before him-so weak from exsertion-Nicholyte was still wondering if it were a spell or somthing of similiar ill. And with that thought he softly touched his open palm to the bards forehead, the Jago's wild bangs threading through the dark elf's fingers. Having given the bard his own life energy to heal him of his wounds, Nic truely hoped nothing darker touched him, for poison and evil spells he had no means to aid him.**

 **He could only light the campfire, and watch and wait.**

 _There exists a world spun entirely of darkness and notes of song rendered in fragile threads of golden. The magic there is a gentle thing, calmly weaving its tapestry of music, imposing onto the farthest reaches of soft black a landscape nebulous and ever-changing. The world is a refuge, an escape, a reality free from pain and evil and fear. A haven._ His _haven_.

The harp of his dreams played with a silver sound, befitting of the silver maid plucking at its strings, but though he had seen and heard her so many times before, haunting the valleys and blank staves of his mind in slumber with the unearthly beauty of her countenance and voice, the song she played for him now was one he had neither heard before, nor thought to compose himself. To be sure, the _words_ were familiar to him, well enough; he could think of few of his kind that had not heard the stories- told always in hushed whispers, as though the mere mention of the names in tones more robust would call down the wrath of the gods once more. _Cyric. Shar_. They were names to be feared, for the mad furies in their hearts that had ripped the Weave of the magic asunder, and the world itself with it... _The white queen is troubled but can't say why. The black queen hates the white and gives the assassin a black coat. The assassin steals upon the white queen. She can't see him gliding through the shadows. The sword screams. The white queen falls. Her city falls. Stones fall in the cavern to crush the soothsayer. The tree burns and thrashes in agony. Branches break. Branches twist and grow together..._

Never, in all the endless years since the Plague, had the ominous divination of Yaphyll been put to music, and it was a music that burned, its dark low tones and dissonant harmonies setting the soul to shivering; its odd, slow, untimed meter, like the hands of a madman twisting nervously together to spin patterns of poverty and blood in rain-soaked air, making the heart skip in its own rhythmic step, faltering as it tried and failed to beat time. The music was a poison, dragging raven's claws over the fabric of the dream-world, the assassin's coat, and tearing it jaggedly off. It was fabric falling, sky falling- _stones falling, stalactites and dust and the downward lash of bloody whips the only rain in a world that had never seen a sky. Men pushing women and children out of the way with what little strength their bodies, strained and torn and and beaten down with ceaseless heavy toil, managed to retain. Hulking pale figures clad in scaled black armor pulling those who had been more weary or insolent than usual into the paths of the deadly precipitation with gauntleted hands like the skeletal fingers of Death. Fingers becoming branches, rocks becoming ash, blood becoming fire and the whip lashed out for HIM, slicing him in two as though he were hollow, a man of twig and straw, twin halves of a disjointed body groping blindly for each other as the winds increased in speed, their howling reaching a feverish, frenzied pitch, the ash in the gales tasting of death and decay, as the flames licked their way ever higher-!_

He did not scream, upon waking. Not quite sure he could, really. There was a weight upon his brow, though, a cool, gentle touch, humming with some sort of energy, but the magic had been torn from its much-needed rest too violently, and rebelled against that foreign force with a silent wail. He knocked the weight away in his haste to sit up, regretting the decision immediately; the world spun, and he gasped- would have retched if he had not suddenly recalled whose company he now kept. Let the pup enjoy his victory. No need to spoil it with tangible vestiges of the turmoil of dreams. He could fix his bloody bastard self up well enough, he reckoned, as soon as he mustered up the energy to retrieve his harp...or the energy to sit up straight, rather than remaining hunched over like a bloody invalid. Wouldn't take but a minute...

 **The hand snapped backward immediatly, surprised indeed by the sudden strike, but unoffended, the hand returned a moment later with its fellow extension, falling carefully but firmly upon the troubled bard's shoulders; twin weights of assurance, rods of wisdom, forbidders against further ailment and talismens to ward and protect, wereas they had been conceived to ruin and destroy.**

 **The dark elf's voice was a clear struck note in the thick waking fog of dream or nightmare, even drowning slumber is one of these that often inspires ones body to act against ones greater reason, instantaneously reacting to protect itself through second nature and instict, when it was not the overseers Foresense or Conscious or rational Judgement.**

 **And so Nic said "Friend, be easy-all is well." Unoffended by the man's troubled awakening.**

He had always known, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he could no longer really consider himself a sane man, but he had, thus far, been able to deny that truth easily enough. Rather anticlimactic, actually, to find that said denial could no longer be carried out not because of some horrid break with reality, complete with visions and wailing and incoherent gibberish, but rather, because of simple physical pain- or the lack of it, to be more precise. He _had_ been lashed with a whip, hadn't he? Great bloody whip of fire, right across the front? Couldn't feel a bloody thing, and wasn't _that_ something to worry over, never mind being the slightest bit _grateful_.

Nicholyte's tone, too, wasn't doing much to help matters. His speech was too easy, too calm; he might've called it gentle had he not heard that very same voice snarling with a frenetic rage more fierce and wild than that of any forest predator. Speaking plainly, he didn't trust it. Not a whit. Either he himself had somehow imagined that entire thing...or else the bloody pup had used some brand of healing magic in his own possession.

... _Sod_ all, but that explained everything. Why the Drow was so calm, so quick to reassure. Why the magic in his own blood shivered and recoiled as though it had been pushed to the ground. While a body that ought to have been a sliced and burnt wreck had barely a single scratch to its dodgy name. Bloody _everything_.

"Wot th' 'ell did ye do t' me?" he growled, or rather, tried to. The words stuck in his throat, making him choke, forcing him to whisper harshly around the burn of ash. Humiliating, that- to depend so much on the power of the music of the voice, only to have it stripped away. No bloody justice in a world that could do that without so much as a by-your-leave.

 **Nicholyte did not understand what still ailed the man. With his spell to heal, it should have worked but somehow had only worsened the man's state. The drow leaned close but remained kneeling where he was, not wanting to sufficate Jago with his worries or concerns, but he continued to press him from a distance with questions.**

 **"I have done nothing but cast a minor spell to heal you.." but now his pale eyes roved over the bard; taking in the sweaty skin long gone tacky with the humid forest air, the lost eyes that had paled with inner horror and some wild fear.. The gaze striking memory upon memory inside his own heart that he recoiled darkly, lips persing tightly. How they all looked the same after so many.. Reminding him of the dozen memories he had witnessed in his young years of blood and bile; of fear and the fearful. Many innocents, escapees, slaves and even rabid men gone insane with terrors. All who had been tracked, cornered, punished or found guilty of one crime or testamony of suffering- All had a continence or bearing of one whose guts had already been spilled out of them, with no way back and no way out, tracked as if by baying Deathdogs and couldnot dare a hope. A sniveling, wimpering wreck pathetically dragging oneself across a beettle pooled floor to get away but knowing the same was impossible. Oh like far too many...**

 **That look was in the eyes of this bard now. Angered inside, Nic couldnot help the flash of indignation, for ALL he had done, he hardly deserved such fear anymore. His thoughts twisting in hot, grieving knots. How dare they! He wanted to rage in that very instant- with a brief, black and blind fury, seven decades old, a thing only growing older- but a wall of cool, clear understanding again overtook such a brief catalyst. It was deserved, his better mind said, that it was because of those horrid thoughts alone that all surface races would ever see him as the predator his skin and blood betrayed. No matter the calm, and kindness and gentleness he strove to excercise, there would always be such a cold, rabid creature underneith. Perhaps sad but it was so, as This was his lot..**

 **So in silence with a bowed head, he stood and moved a ways off, giving Jago the time to adjust to the waking world. To come to terms with his confused state, and perhaps to feel relief in the midst of his recent affliction, as the Drow's son kept himself far, far apart.**

Perhaps one could only appreciate the expressivity inherent in silence when one's voice, the most basic and favored means of stripping silence away, had been taken from him. The Drow's words meant nothing, passed his ringing ears by like insects winging their hurried way through a breeze; it was the look of weary resignation passing over his face, tinged with the faint shadow of sorrow- pale eyes eclipsed by a world of darkness captured in memory- that pulled him from the clamor in his head and heart and into the waking world once more.

His companion stood forlorn at the far edge of the clearing, head bowed as though in prayer (though he couldn't have guessed to whom he might have been speaking). There was, it seemed, a strange tension thrumming through his powerful frame; the straight lines of broad shoulders and back stood out stark and hard against the smudged landscape of blacks, browns, and grays to which the wood surrounding the clearing had been reduced. Bushes, little more than ash ghosting up the leeward side of trees burnt into skeletal shadows of the proud beings they had once been. Dark sap, sticky and thick like blood, staining the leaves and stones and dirt, glinting with the dull remnants of evil newly vanquished in the fading light of the day. An elf, alone amidst the carnage, one side of him born and raised in the rubble and the blood and the pain, the other side yearning for the freedom and gentler mien of a world to which he was not, and could never be, fully bound.

His grief was the convert's grief: guilt for a past he had not owned, fearful contempt for the brethren he had left behind, sorrow for the mortals who feared him now, walking the lands above in spite of his years and marks of race, both soaked black with innocent, work-worn blood. Silent upon the cracked and weeping ground, the bard abandoned the silver words he threw about himself like a shield, and let himself wait, and watch, and take in the emotions and memories flashing like minnows through his companion's eyes. A grief like that, he'd be a right fool to let it fester unheeded. Insane he was, sure- but. Not a fool. Never quite that.

Pulling himself to his feet, the bard limped over to the Drow on legs stiff with disuse, moving with silent steps to stand beside the fellow. He said nothing (for his throat was still raw, and words would've been useless, besides), but the magic had calmed as he had, and he let its energy sing when he could not, a calming impression of a voice in the mind's ear, whispering on one gentle note a chorus of _I hear, I see, I understand, I stand beside, unafraid, but willing, for you are not alone_ , until even the dying rays of sunlight seemed to bleed in sympathy for their shared burden.

 **Nicholyte chin jerked away from the voice in his mind. His thick brows drawn tightly together guarding his iron gaze, that which kept his aggitated soul at a distance from the late consolation of his companion. 'They will only pity, never care or understand you-' His thoughts declare unmoved by the bard's new concern. Nic himself just as wary of his companion's silent watch near him, as if his bodily presense might be of comfort to the drow.**

 **Nic's inner fears shrunk from him, even as his dark heart birthed wicked voices. Voices speaking truths of his father and his brother's wisdom before him, scorning his pathetic desire to be better then what he was. 'You should move on." such thoughts whispered. "Best you give no further show of weakness. How we kin would spit upon your pathetic, crawling dispostion. Pouting.. you blubbering child...' Nic's innermind flashed with the sound of a whistling crack and his entire spine jerked straight, his pale eyes suddenly burning and alive. He took two swift steps from the bard and rounded to face him, his voice strong as he declared. "This is no place to make camp now. Come, another mile and you may rest."**

 **He then strode back to where the man had before laid, and gathered up his bag to bear for him, ignoring the eyes that he felt following him. He felt a future of emotions that had proceeded him before this one.**

 **For it was always the impatiance his companion would feel for their curiosity or pity being cut off, the barbing tangle of misunderstanding at having to set himself apart from others, to the heated irritation and the eventual disengagment of bitterly parting ways that was sure to come once his dark and fickle company was tired of.**

 **But it had always been in one walk of life or another. For nigh on 42 years it had been so... Why should that change now?**

 **"Come." He repeated and slowly begain to lead the way down the road again, mindful of his companion's poor pace but distanced enough to discourage discussion..**

He would be lying if he said that the Drow's abrupt change in demeanor didn't trouble him at least a bit. The fellow jolted upright, as one who felt the crack of a whip against his back would do; his eyes, until that moment dim with the mists of anamnesis, grew hard and dark, burning with a fire fit to set even the most stubborn of memories alight. He fled from the clearing with those flames of his own making, real and imagined alike, licking at his heels, staring resolutely forward, as though to hazard even the smallest glance behind would bring him to his knees. Depleted the bard's magics may yet have been, sure, but he didn't even need the aid of the Sense to feel the thick knot of his companion's roiling emotions like a weight upon his own soul.

So. His footsteps flagged, not from weariness or fear in his own spirit, but from the sense of them in the Drow's. In any case, he thought it might be unwise, at this point, to even try to catch up. He had nothing to his paltry name but for some modicum of skill at reading others, and every taut line in Nicholyte's receding form snarled _keep away, keep silent, leave me be_. To be fair, it wasn't the true antipathy of one wholly opposed to interaction- the pricking of thorns rather than the slashing of knives- but neither was it in any way welcoming.

Not yet, at least. This was the sort of escape that was wrought of fear- preemptive action taken against assumed abandonment, was his guess. As long a life as the fellow'd had, so far and so long away from his prison of a home...such feelings were bound to be running amok. Still, he waited, let himself trail the Drow the whole mile's way in contemplative silence. The fellow would talk in time...perhaps. Or perhaps not. Perhaps his suspicions would be proven wrong, or perhaps not. He waited, that he could find out- preferably without the stench of Blight hanging over his head. No killing-field had ever been a place conducive to the spilling of hearts. No sense in breaking a perfectly reasonable tradition.

 **The walk was quiet and long. The uncomfortable silence between the two difficult as a cross blowing breeze. Every so often the drow's head would turn an eye behind him, to check and ensure the man was still behind him.**

 **The roadside mile was reached at last. Over an hour it had taken at such a weak, such a beaten pace, but at last Nic carefully set down Jago's pack and turned to him, words now easy again. As if the long walk had helped put himself at peace and contained his strange put of temper.**

 **The spot he had picked was thirty paces from the nearest tree or shrub, chosen in the clear and in full sun. Not very bright for the sky had a few chasing clouds running across it, dancing through rays of sun and shadow.**

 **Nic gestured to the chosen rest spot. "I hope this place will suffice."**

 **He seemed sorry for having pushed the man in his state, his posture no longer rigid or avoiding. He still was uneasy with the whispers in his mind but was not about to treat Jago like an enemy. He was not rediculous.**

The bard gave his companion a long, searching look as he halfheartedly surveyed the bare wayside. The more selfish part of him (though he really preferred to think of it as a keen instinct for self-preservation rather than selfishness) was thankful for the lack of foliage, for the stress of the unexpected attack still grated on both his nerves and his pride, but the abject _lack_ of cover was troublesome in itself. Besides the which, he couldn't help but feel more than a bit surprised that the Drow, wary even of dim light, had chosen a spot so directly exposed to the harsh rays of the sun. Cloud-spotted and gearing up to set it may have been, but it was strong enough yet to give him pause.

"It'll suffice enough fer me," he replied, not yet daring to raise his voice above a rasping whisper. "Fine anywhere, me. 'M more worried 'bout you, mate." There, he'd said it. Not so hard, was it, to look after a companion? Least he could do, that, when the fellow had shouldered his own pack atop the weight of the mess he was carrying about in his head. "Sunligh' not too strong for ye? I'll tek a gander a' another place, if it is. No trouble, tha'."

It was an olive branch of sorts, he reasoned. A flag and sign of love...well, perhaps he wouldn't take it that far. Mighty troublesome thing, to be tossing around words like that for a fellow he'd only just met. Camaraderie, perhaps, or at the very least reconciliation. He could sense that Nicholyte was still on edge, still warring with some insidious sense of darkness and ill feeling; the strange flashes and dilations of a mind angrily at work were plain enough to see in his pale eyes. He figured the pup'd let him in if he wanted (unlikely an outcome as that was). Easier to open up to someone willing to make nice, was what he'd learned. Far, far easier. The harder thing was knowing if that someone would guard the knowledge like a treasure or dish it out to all and sundry. Harder...and never resulting in a pleasant conclusion.

Speaking personally, he'd had enough fighting for one day. Digging out the old key to the mind-safe was imperative.

 **The kind gesture of consideration, no matter how simple it was, was appreciated. The level of concern he voiced seemed appropriete for their having only known each other a half day, but then to see and the warmth of care that lit up the fellow's eyes was somthing Nicholyte had not had in a long while; nigh on a decade he believed. Choseing not to face it directly, he crouched down, opening the snaps of the outside of the pack to take the bedroll from as he formed his answer. The sun indeed was a bother but nothing now that his blood was still warmed from the fight. He shook his head dissmissivly.**

 **"It is no matter. the sun is no longer so bright and in light of that attack, I thought you would appreciate the open air more then another wooded rest. And as I have had my rest, and you did not yet, I think it would do well for you and your weariness." He unrolls it and spreads it comfortably down, a breeze wails softly past them both. Long legs push him upward to stand again, resiliant against the toll of the afternoon hours.**

 **Another breeze blows by them, and the dark elf takes in the wide view. Gauging the landscape with keen attention and care, he percieves no threat of any sort. He vast lungs(residing in a chest a bit large and excersised, concidering his decent) breathed a deep breath of the fresh air, with his body's expression of confidence he believed that all was well and safe. "This place is as good as any. Nothing of similiar like to the wood before shall trouble us again today."**

 **He did not mention that those creatures were hardly anything to worry over, for in his long life as a guardian of many woods, there were few monsters that could be defeated so easy and many more that were far more deadly... Especially to one such as his fellow traveler. Nic met those pale grey eyes, the soul of a reader and riddleman. Wisdom was in his silence, darkness was in his smile. His hearty laugh held the bitter edge of one who laughed so as not to cry. He was a man that took others burdans upon himself to better them by relieving them of worry. Having his profession as a good laugh when peoples were forgetting what that even was, and sparking the imaginations of the young, who in these times grew old before their first decade of life.**

 **This Jago, he felt was one Nic believed did not belong out in the bitter wild and wilderness. Tis a man of socializing and soul searching, a character who was eager to entertain and to distract a jolly crowd at his own expence from the murk of everyday affairs that weighed down mens black hearts, writhing of self-despair. Yes his was an occupation best suited in an inn or local township, bringing cheer, courage, joy and ease to all those this black world had kissed with darkness and tempted in want and misery.**

 **Such thoughts danced around his head, resolve forming into a figure of decision. The dark elf again gestured to the bedroll. "Rest. I will keep watch till you awaken."**

"D'ye think I'm an invalid, or wha'?" the bard shot back, an amused smirk tugging at his lips. "Never though' I'd 'ave t' accuse someone o' bein' more of a mum than me own." Granted, that wasn't saying much; he could hardly remember his mum, and what little he _could_ call to mind said nothing particularly kind about her character and habits. But. The past was the past, and in the past it would stay. There was enough darkness in this world without the added pollution of yet another sob story.

He'd always found a more lucrative undertaking in the telling of the old stories, all heroic deeds and maidens fair, resplendent with monsters and battles and colors and sounds and, more often than not, a favorable ending. Of course, witty stabs at ruling figures and unruly townsfolk never went unappreciated, but often people simply didn't _want_ to be weighed down with yarns of woe, and heartbreak, and poverty, and misery, and a drudging conclusion of death with life left unfulfilled. They had enough of those stories day in and day out, _lived_ them, day in and day out, and what sort of shoddy escape would that be, leaving one life of toil to hear about one hardly changed? It was escape that brought people to him- those yearning deeply for times gone by, or times that had never been, times that took them from the relentless gray of their own lives to worlds enlivened. Those were the tales he sought, traveling the world, crossing its boundaries like they were mere town lines and not vastly disparate worlds. Running, perhaps, but he had just as much reason to run as any other man. _To look in a mirror is never an easy thing, but to hold that mirror behind your path brings darkness unfathomable_.

There were other tales, of course, that he was told. Tales told in hushed whispers, as the last flickers of candlelight sputtered, gasping death throes in a pool of wax that had burned the whole night through. Tales of the heart, of the heart of hearts- private, filled with remorse or guilt or blood or tears or all of them, of any number of sordid and shameful things, cracks in the mirrors of their pasts. Tales told in despair, when all that was left was hollowness, when even loathing was too difficult to muster up. When only the trust of a stranger could ease the burden of a troubled soul.

He carried those tales with him always, took them and treasured them and locked them away, never to see the light of day, weighing his own soul down but growing heartened once more by the prospect of lifting the soul of another. Over the years he had had many names, many titles, all piled atop one another until the bottom, the original self, was obliterated and lost to the sands and weight of time. _The Confidence Man_ , they called him- those weary, downtrodden folk who let him lance the wounds upon hearts scarred but not healed. Of all the names he had, he could not help but think, sometimes, that that was the only one with any real substance. Any real purpose.

So he took up the name again as he lay down, lithe body stretching out like a cat's as he waved his hand, an ironic, but not ungrateful, surrender. He took it up and draped it over his arm, as he would a coat he did not yet need to don, an assurance of a future covering. He had let it go unworn for far too long. If that was the name which gave him purpose, it was high time to take the purpose back.

 **The elf humored the man's jib of his "mothering" finding he had nothing of similiar humor to say, chose to say nothing at all. True to word he stayed and he watched, keeping an eye on the sinking sun as the minuetes and hour passed by.**

 **Nic found himself pondering the mysterious letter in his possesion. The letter he had recieved from a stranger and the entire reason and business to which he was traveling to Coastwatch for. He gound himself taking it out from his belt to look it over and read it again...**

 **'I am sorry for what these beasts have done to you and your family..' How did this-Mr. P know who he was and of his family? That he was able to establish his varrying travel patterns to get this letter to him anonomasly, was unnerving.**

 _ **'Word has reached me of you dragon slaying feats and skills, Nicholyte...' Small consolation was that this person was unaware of his family name, or if this person knew it perhaps had chosen against using it as it would most certainly would have alarmed him, perhaps into permanent hiding...**_

 **And here he was doing as bid-meeting a strange man in a strange town on even stranger business that one might call saving the world. Madness. Yet he found himself going anyway.**

 _ **'Where will this lead me?'**_ **He wondered.** _ **'Will this choice come to haunt me?'**_

 **And so the hours gently waxed on. Both companions watching the day dance on, like seasons passing. Strange enough, after such excitment of the early afternoon, nowthere was nothing of note to speak of...**

 **Calm. Quiet. Peaceful.**

 **The evening met them timidly while the crickets struck up a chorus, singing handsomely next to the bullfrog and katydids; they werecreatures who sang the moon her lulabye and a lolling bed tuneto thetraveling stranger.**

 **Nicholyte felt the breeze cool, the later evening now covering the land. 'We should move onward.' he thought to himself, taking in the shapes and shadows of the land about them. But his keen eyes percieved no danger, so he came close to gently rouse the bard from his heavy dreams…**

Though he would've been loath to admit it, the brief respite had done him a world of good. The magic sang in his blood with full voice once more, vibrant and lively- no more the trembling, spent, prostrate thing it had been mere hours ago. It had been so long since he had had to tax it so that he'd forgotten how, precisely, it felt: like cutting off a limb, or becoming deaf and blind in a moment's time. Immensely disorienting, that, and so he could not be nearly so vexed with the Drow as he might've liked, when the fellow moved to wake him with evening already weaving its threads of ink and stars into the sky.

The hand upon his shoulder was gentle and, though not quite fearful, still more hesitant than he might have expected...as one would wake a man trapped in horrid dreams, back curled against a rough wall, body taut like a drawn bowstring, primed to lash out at any who dared lay a hand upon him. Strange. ...Stranger still, perhaps, that he was aware of no dreams at all, be they good or ill, passing shadows over his mind. A charm of the magic, staving them off to give itself time to heal? Well. He would take what gifts he got. Dreams were the one thing he would prefer to live without.

"You're a bi' late," he remarked as he pulled himself upright, pleased to note that his voice had recovered some of its customary resonance. "Wasn' I mean' t' tek over yer watch? Wor 'appened t' tha'? Y' jus' forgot about i', did ye?" Shaking his head in mock consternation, he offered the Drow a flash of a smile as he rifled quickly through his pack and cast all of his fully functioning senses about. Nothing amiss, or so it seemed. Thank all the gods for that.

 **Nic's smile was reflexive-a gentle tug of the left side of his narrow mouth in answer to the bard's rebuke, but it wad all in good humor he knew.**

 **To see his eyes bright and his temperment easy again(Well. More easy, at least) were comforting to know. The man had retrieved during his long rest and so any riling was well deserving.**

 **"I say take your tokens where you can, no matter how small or few they come. And I dont need rest yet, so I was well to watch the full time." Nic dished a bowl of stew from the small pot that rested over the fire then held it out to Jago.**

 **"Now eat and then we'll be off." It may have sounded bossy but his eyes were still smiling lightly. The elf seemed used to the duties of loner, leader and guide. No offense intended it was easy enough to see, he was just ackward socially. Manners and dancing words and the like.**

"Righ' bloody tyrant, you are," Jago quipped, waggling his thick brows teasingly at the Drow. "Off t' yer Southern seaport, righ'? Uncharted territ'ry and unknown business?" Truth be told, there was part of him that considered, not for the first time, that he ought to have been more perturbed by the fact that he knew not what his companion's business actually _was_. He hadn't troubled himself in thinking about it, really. He hadn't foreseen staying with the fellow once they arrived at Coastwatch, when he'd agreed to tag along, but now...?

...Perhaps he was lonely, traveling so many years on his own. Perhaps he was simply mad, trusting this fellow about whom he still knew so little. Or perhaps the hands of the gods had guided them together for a reason, that would reveal itself...in time. Yes, he'd have to give it time. He only hoped he could hang onto his life in the interim.

"'S good, this," he remarked, apropos of nothing, as he took a sip of the stew, resolving to let Fate play out as it would, and always had done, and always would do. "You, Master Elf, 'ave gor a touch o' chef's magic in yer 'ands."

 **The dark elf stood smoothly and stretched his anxious limbs, eager to push forward but not impatiently so. The soft evening breeze blew warmly against his cold face, tasting of rain and lightning. He was never bothered or worried over a storm or most weather, remembering in his years of racing through a deluge wild or brawling madly in the muddy streets.**

 **His heart raced at the memeories and he closed his eyes to the rushing wind that tugged his hair with the abandon of a fevered lover. How his blood sang with the urges of instinct and the violent freedom of the elements, his years as a outlander were murials painted in his mind that danced through his waking dreams and were what gave him company in the solidude of his; when confined(on business)to the smothering comforts of a tidy tavern or inn's walls.**

 **"And I go to Coastwatch on business. Though what sort of business, I am still unsure of.." he answers the bard's first question. "And yourself? Is it for business that you travel as well? Or if not, perhaps wanderlust?"**

 **He is still facing the breeze with his eyes closed and head high, still enrapt in the wild wind that was kissing his cheeks and bare neck. Inner mind alive and bathing in twisting thought and memories but not unaware of his other. Full of peace and inspiration but companiably inquirious.**

"Bes' sor' o' business there is, I think," Jago replied, pulling his pack onto his shoulder as he stood and returned the bowl to Nicholyte. "Not knowin'. Kin mek a grea' bi' o' profit from uncer'ainty."

There was a storm on the air, he thought, casting sharp eyes about, drawing back around him the tingling hum of awareness that often meant the difference between life and death out on the roads. He could smell it: the salt wind, the cloying sweetness of rain, the electric tang of lightning, like ash on stone. A strange, uneasy feeling in the air, as though it wanted to dance, to shout and revel in its wildness even as it yearned to hide from its own ferocity. He could understand that, really: that pull of being torn in two. The Elven blood in him sang with the stirring of the overcharged air, threw him into a singularly Fey mood that his human practicalities quailed at. On the other hand...there would be no shelter from the winds and persecutions of the sky this night. No reason not to tell those pesky practicalities to have a bit of a kip. Uncertainty. Wanderlust. Madness, gaiety, all things of abandon- might as well embrace them now. He was here, off on another man's business to who-knew-where before roving back again to who-knew-where-else. There was nothing to do _but_ push on.

"Fer meself..." His fingers found the charm hanging about his neck, toyed with it as he stepped up beside the Drow and closed his eyes briefly against the cool brush of wind that buffeted them. "No business except tha'. Go where th' wind wills, as they say. Isn' tha' wot wanderlust is?"

 **The dark elf's mouth pulled his lips to his right cheek, the brewing storm and the rumbling sea in the sky stirring his blood and gripping his bones. He felt so alive in this moment that his thoughts raced wildly across every plain of dark and passionate memory. 'Wanderlust' yes and so much more then just to go where the wind calls. Wanderlust was a furious passion to give ones self to the elements of this world, not with only ones eyes or ones ears but ones WHOLE SENSES. Every capacity must be given over like how you give yourself into your lover's arms. Every sense becoming theirs, letting them possess you like some fiendish creature..**

 _ **Yes, Nic's mind fell backward into a dark memory of scarred hands griping him and pulling him darkly backward into the soul of a crackling thunderhead. The seas surged inside him, pulling backward and then forwards like a plunging wave. His head breached the surface of drowning sensations, while a pair of golden eyes burned into the back of his head. They moved as one, a mega storm tearing the sky apart above them-and in the next viceral moment, his voice howled to the heavens, somthing rending inside him; his golden eyed other crying out with him above his shoulder. Their voices as one.**_

 **The dark elf now opened his eyes meeting a mighty bolt of lightning that split the sky above them. Side by side with this fellow wanderer beside him he continued to muse darkly. Lonely.**

 **Wanderlust indeed. Nicholyte felt the storm calling him to cast off every care and follow to an uncertain end; to test himself against the earth's great power and dare to walk away again. And in this moment he wanted nothing more then to abandon himself to another power and become utterly consumed in a black void. The song of the Lolth's curse singing to him, calling to his dark nature. But too wise and alone was he that he would not. And after his last companion had nearly stolen him to a fate befitting the Nine Hells, he was stonefast resolved to fast forever from his barbaric appetites, and to surrender his lonely yearnings to the sky that cried to him for his soul.**

 **He answered his companion at last. "Yes, that must be what wanderlust is.." And took his own simple pack to rest upon a single shoulder. "And tonight we follow it." The sky then birthing the first showers of rain's tears upon the pair, and the dark elf started off into the night with his companion.**

 _Do not trust this night_.

The thought was a small one, more a warning flash of sensation than anything else, nearly lost to the screeching wind and brilliant lightning that cracked whiplike through the air and split the roiling clouds in two. Yet it was there, a shadow lurking beneath the fevered songs that pulsed a frenetic staccato in the recesses of his Elven mind- a shadow gathering, gaining form, sounding its own tremulous note as he strode alongside the Drow into the heart of the storm.

His companion's eyes were bright; they flashed red, gold, black, like the eyes of an animal, bound to the scent-trail of blood and moving in with gleeful abandon for the thrill of the chase, the hunt, the kill. The aura of his energy was a wall of fire, threads of passion twisting through pain and pleasure like choking vines, and the magic in his own blood trembled, yearning to join with the Drow's primal life-force even as its human frailties shied away. The air was fraught with tension, with memory, the rain lashing against their bodies like ocean swells, the wind pushing them forward and holding them fast like hands scarred with trailing branches, and suddenly he could _see_ the hands, the waves, though the images were not his own, raging through the sky, spilling the blood of the heavens to give them life-!

Then. Silence. Silence, as the voices of the Ageless rose dark and wild within him: whispers, wails, calls for fury and blood as they bound themselves to the energies of the other. And he fought them, magic rearing up with a snarl to beat them down, crying out _you are not welcome here, never welcome here_ , for they had imprisoned him once. Rendered him senseless, a vessel for their rage, and in the heat of it he had been caught. _Never again. You are not welcome here. Never, never again_.


End file.
